Interview with Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, upon her return from Vienna, shortly after a deal has been reached with Iran to block it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The interview is about ten minutes long.
This is another in a series of reviews of new books on Middle Eastern affairs. We asked Dr. Gail
Weigl, an APN volunteer and a professor of art history, to review Sandy Tolan's new book about young
Palestinian using the power of music to transform their lives under occupation.
APN's Ori Nir interviews Sandy Tolan.
Sandy Tolan, Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land (New York, 2015). 438 pages. $28.00.
Sandy Tolan’s Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land reads like fiction, but is a meticulously documented work of non-fiction, as the author makes clear in his introduction to the extensive source notes. While the book remains focused throughout on the main protagonist, Ramzi Aburedwan, his musical training and successful effort to bring the healing power of music to the Palestinian communities of the Israeli Occupied Territories, equal – if not more attention – is devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the founding of Israel to the present. The stage for Ramzi’s story is never-ending physical and emotional violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Israeli government and IDF. That history is interconnected with the more or less extensive stories of many Palestinians, Europeans and Americans devoted to music as the means to assuage Palestinian suffering and restore Palestinian honor and identity.
On July 1, 2015, Prof. Ami Pedahzur of the University of Texas at Austin, an expert on Israel's radical right, briefed APN on his recent research regarding the West Bank settlers' power and influence in Israeli public life.
On June 3, 2015, APN hosted Israeli historian and journalist Tom Segev, the author of 1967:
Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, to discuss the 48th anniversary
of the Six Day War and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that unfolded after the war.
On May 14, 2015, just as Benjamin Netanyahu's new government was being sworn-in in the Knesset, Israeli political expert and Peace Now founder Galia Golan was APN's guest on a briefing call analyzing the domestic and foreign policy challenges facing the new government.
On March 18, 2015, the day after Israel's general elections, Israeli political expert Yossi Alpher
was APN's guest on a briefing call analyzing the election results.
On March 13, 2015, APN's Ori Nir was interviewed on Warren Olney's NPR nationally syndicated show,
To the Point, to discuss Israel's upcoming elections.
On Friday, February 27th APN hosted Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares
Fund and Larry Hanauer of the RAND Corporation on a briefing call regarding the current negotiations over
Iran's nuclear quest, Congress' role in the negotiations process, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
effort to use Congress to scuttle the Obama administration's efforts to reach a deal.
On February 17, 2015, APN hosted Amir Tibon, the diplomatic correspondent of Israel's news site
Walla for a briefing call on Israel's upcoming elections. A month before the elections, Tibon gave an
eye-opening review of Israel's electoral arena, spoke about the way in which Prime Minister Netanyahu's push to
speak to Congress about Iran is playing in Israel, and about the way in which various issues are playing in the
campaign. He also reviewed various post-election scenarios, and predicted that Benjamin Netanyahu, if he's
called on to form the next government, would strive to form a national unity government with the Zionist Camp's
Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni.
On December 8, 2014, APN hosted Akiva Eldar of al-Monitor.com, the former chief political
writer of Israel's Haaretz, for a briefing call on the Israeli political scene following the decision taken by
Israel's political leaders to hold early elections in March 2015.